Labels, Laws, and Lips
by TenRose4ever
Summary: The Doctor finds something in his galley, but is it really the nightmare he believes it to be?


**Notes:** Another story written for a prompt from long, long, long ago… In April 2018, DoctorRosePrompts offered a drabble prompt, _vile_. The drabble got away from me, so I figured if I used another drabble prompt from that month, _flail_, I could justify the excess wordage. LOL Well, the story finally came in at just over 1600 words after I finally figured out an ending. So, nothing remotely resembling a drabble…

Oh, and a word of warning… if you're looking for plot, you won't find it here.

A whole heap of thanks, as always, to my two lovely betas, Rose_Nebula and mrsbertucci. Their ideas, support, and wonderful advice made this story oh-so much better. I have fiddled with it since they last looked, so all mistakes are mine.

* * *

"What the hell is this?" His brows furrowed, the Doctor pulled a jar from the back of the fridge.

Rose toed the tip of her trainer against the galley floor. She squinted at the jar in his hand, feigning ignorance. "I dunno…" She shrugged, softening her eyes and offering him a pretty smile. "Looks like jam."

"Oh, you don't fool me, Rose Tyler! Looking at me like that, all…" his hand flapped in wild circles as he searched for the correct word, "…all innocence and, weeell… like that!"

Rose stepped toward him, making a show of carefully reading the label. "Pro…bu…floo…thig Pear Jam, it says."

"_Pear_ jam, Rose! _PEAR_ jam!" He set the jar down with a thump, screwing up his face in revulsion as a dollop that had congealed on the side of the jar stuck to his hand.

"I don't see why you're so upset. They're not proper pears, Doctor. They're Profloo-thingy pears. Completely different thing, yeah?"

"Pear! _Pear!_ That word isn't just bandied about willy-nilly, you know. In order to call something a pear, it has to actually _be_ a pear! It must be of the Pyrus genus, originating from Earth. In addition–″

"Seems like a lot of fuss over a jar of jam!"

He scowled and raised his voice. "_In addition,_ if it contains any pear – _at all_ – it must be clearly labelled as such."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Blimey!"

"This is a serious matter." He sniffed and made a show of straightening his tie. "All sorts of legal mumbo-jumbo surrounding it, specifically to keep people like me safe from accidentally consuming it. Can you just imagine the danger if some unsuspecting soul was to unknowingly eat that vile concoction?"

"Mumbo-jumbo, yeah? Seems right up your alley. Why do I get the feeling you might have been instrumental in getting this particular law passed?"

"Weeell…"

"Ah-ha!"

"I suppose I may have offered my expertise and had a hand in writing up the legal documents. The wording on the labels needed to be precise. It was a matter of self-preservation, really."

"More like findin' a way to ruin breakfast for billions of people across the galaxy, when all they wanted was a nice bit of pear jam with their morning toast."

"Oh, I see. By _'ruin'_ you actually mean _'saving them from the horrific torture of having their taste buds assailed by a noxious compound.'_ I consider it to be an invaluable public service. But I suspect, Rose Tyler, _you_ are trying to deflect the conversation."

"W'at? You're the one's been nattering on about laws and labels and all that."

"All I'm saying is, what really matters is who brought this onto the TARDIS? Hmmm?" He directed his raised brows at her with a terse nod.

"Why're you lookin' at me?"

"Well, _I_ certainly didn't put it here. So that leaves…" He gestured in her direction with a flip of his hand.

"What? Me? Look at it! It was shoved right at the back, behind all sorts of rubbish. Could have been back there for years, yeah. You've traveled with… ya know… others in the past." She nibbled on her thumb. "Maybe you even bought it yourself, in an earlier body, and just… I dunno… forgot. You _are_ gettin' on, yeah? Memory slippin' a bit, there, Doctor?"

He sputtered. "My memory does not slip."

"If you insist, bu–"

"I, Rose Tyler, am in the prime of my life! And, by the way," he scoffed, "I would never (I repeat _never!)_ in _any_ body procure a Pyrus preserve. The fact that you could ever suggest such a thing…" his face screwed up again, "…repulsive!"

"So you say…"

"I _do_. Besides, it looks suspiciously like one of the jars from that vendor stall on Hraxro 4." He gave the jar a suspicious poke, nudging it along the counter, away from him.

"The one where you were sampling preserves like they were goin' out of style?"

"The one where _you_ used up nearly half of my virtually unlimited-credit credit stick... apparently with the intention of smuggling this… this abomination onto the TARDIS."

Rose snatched up the jar. "How d'ya know it's an abomination? I bet you've never even tried it."

"And I'm not going to!"

"Scared?"

He rolled his eyes. "Please, I'm a Time Lord, Rose."

Rose grasped the lid of the jar, and looking him directly in the eye, sent the _Time Lord_ a challenging smirk.

"Now, Rose…"

She twisted the lid, loosening it.

"Don't…" the Doctor ran a hand through his hair, "don't do that…"

"What? This?" She lifted the lid off the jar, exposing the chartreuse-coloured contents.

He yelped, springing backward as she tipped the jar toward him to prove to him how innocuous the jam was.

She laughed. "Ya plum!"

"_Plum!_ Plum would be fine. A plum is a perfectly lovely fruit. That…" he took another step back, "…that is… weeell… it's _not!" _

Rose pursued him, thrusting the jar toward him, laughing breathlessly, and relentlessly pushing into his personal space as he floundered backward. He bumped against the breakfast table, arms and legs flailing as he struggled to keep his balance.

"Mind the…" Her amusement quickly turned to alarm. "Oh my God!" She slapped the jam jar onto the table and grabbed the Doctor's hands to steady him. She coaxed him into one of the chairs, then settled onto his lap, facing him, her legs dangling on either side of his. She stroked the hair by his temple. "You all right, mate?"

"I'm fine!" he snapped, shoving her hand away and turning his face from her, a great, big, Time Lord pout quivering over his lips.

"I'm sorry, Doctor." Rose caught him by the chin and gently turned his head back to face her. "I was jus' takin' the mick, ya plonker. If I'd realized how violently you'd respond… I mean, you didn't seem to mind before, yeah…" She let her words trail away, not sure he would be in the mood for such drastic revelations. She ran her finger over the stress-dimple that had formed in his cheek.

He harrumphed, but she could feel his tension slowly easing.

She shook her head with a fond smile. "So, I guess even Time Lords get scared sometimes, yeah?"

"S'pose so," he muttered, wrapping his arms around Rose's waist, pulling her closer against him, and she laid her head on his shoulder. "Hold on," he suddenly stiffened again, pushing her back to look her in the eye, "what did you mean when you said, _'you didn't seem to mind before…'"_

"Nothin' really. Doesn't matter. Can we jus' cuddle? It was nice, that." She offered him a soft, flirty smile.

He wasn't taking the bait. "Out with it! What did you mean by _'before'?"_

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Then she reached back and grabbed the open jar of jam, and ignoring the Doctor's gasp of horror, she stuck her finger into the jam and swirled it around. The Doctor's legs jittered underneath her, his flight response kicking in again.

"Remember, the other night, there, after we got back from rescuing all those Vriomri herdbeasts from the mud pits?"

He nodded, his feet tapping against the floor. His eyes were fixed on her finger, stirring the jam. Rose could see it was taking all his willpower to not throw her off his lap and run. She would make it quick, then, put him out of his misery as fast as possible.

"We were filthy, yeah, so we each went and showered, and then you met me here, in the galley."

"Ah, yes," he relaxed again, his attention drawn from the jam by his memory, "you smelled so good. So Rose-y and lovely. A relief, I'll tell you, after smelling nothing but that foul muck for ages."

"We snogged, remember?"

"Oh, yes! How could I forget. A brilliant snog, that! And you had that brilliant new lip balm. That was the icing on the perfectly delicious Rose-cake!" He beamed a toothy grin at her.

She removed her finger from the jam and brought it to her lips.

"NO!" The lovely smile dropped from his face. "Oh, don't do that! No, no, no, no, no! Here I was reliving a lovely memory and..."

Rose made a show of seductively sucking the confection from her finger. Then, she wound her arms around his neck and leaned her forehead against his, their breaths and his whimpers of trepidation mingling between them. His hearts crashed against her through their layers of clothes and she didn't doubt arousal was to blame as much as fear.

She closed in on his mouth, their noses bumping awkwardly. His hands trembled at her waist, grasping her tighter.

"Jus' think of it as an adventure, Doctor." She carded her fingers through the soft hair at the back of his head, and after a moment, she felt him relaxing into her touch.

"Weeell," he drew her against him, his words ghosting over her lips, "when you put it like that… Who am I to say no to an adventure?"

"Exactly! But, getting back to what I meant when I said, _'before'_, I have a confession to make..." Before he could respond, she quickly closed the remaining space between them and captured his lips with her own Probufloothig Pear Jam-coated ones, murmuring into the kiss, "It wasn't lip balm."


End file.
